11Nojiri

ELEVATION 1,560 FEET

You who are without faith, simply look at September, October;

The yellow leaves fall in confusion, filling the mountains and rivers.

—Zenrin kushu

NOJIRI is a typical mountain town, located on what is perhaps the broadest and deepest stretch of the Kiso River in the entire valley. The houses and shops are all relatively new due to fires in 1791, 1824, and a particularly disastrous one in 1894 when nearly half of the buildings were destroyed. Still, it was and remains a prosperous town, and in the census of 1843, it was recorded that there were 108 houses inhabited by a population of 986 people. There was also a honjin, a waki-honjin, two forwarding agents, and nineteen inns. In the heyday of the post towns, Nojiri was known for its seven bends in the roads, constructed so as to confuse any invading armies.

It was, however, not always such a pleasant place to stay over for the night. According to Ota Nanpo,

In Nojiri, I spent the night in the honjin operated by Mori Shosa Hyoemon. This is a structure of wooden planking without a fence or wall. Nevertheless, I saw a placard stating that Makino Bizen no kami stayed here last year for one night on October 9th when coming on official business. It is truly a “journey” when staying in such a miserable setting. All night long there was the sound of the rain, and the rough reverberation of the flow of the river.

Echoing this, in the Kisoji meisho zue, it says,

The flow of the Kiso River [here] booms and leaps, and sounds like thunder. During times of heavy rains, there is a great fear of its overflowing its banks.

My stay was far more enjoyable. As I walked into town, my first stop was the Donguri Coffee Shop, where Ms. Ueda, the o-kami-san, welcomed me with exclamations of how long it had been. I ordered a “morning set,” despite the fact that morning was over, and she brought me a tray with coffee, yogurt with blueberry jam, a thick slice of buttered toast, and a hard-boiled egg. We chatted for a while, but her accent is difficult to understand—she had come to Nojiri as a bride from another town across the mountains, Hida Takayama. Another patron, an older gentleman from the area, also joined the conversation. His dialect was even more foreign to me, and I was not very talkative. When he left, however, he smiled and quoted the old Zen and tea ceremony adage ichigo ichie (), “Each meeting a once-in-a-lifetime event”—and I was ashamed of my reticence. When I took my own leave a few minutes later, Ms. Ueda, who had also noticed my limp, insisted on bringing me an antibiotic cream and bandages for my feet.

It was still too early to check in to my inn, so I made my way to the Myokakuji, a large Buddhist temple established in 1624, on the edge of town. There is a large, beautiful garden here, with one ancient ginkgo tree, at this time of year in full yellow autumn array. Here and there are small stone statues of the Buddha’s disciples, but most striking is the Maria Kannon. This is also carved out of stone, stands about two and a half feet high, and has the date 1832 inscribed on the back. At first glance, it seems to be a Thousand-Armed Kannon (actually, there are only six arms), but in her right hand she appears to hold something like a cross. This again suggests that there must have been communities of “Hidden Christians” all along the Kiso, doing their best not to be discovered but intent on worshipping their icons in one way or another.

Inside the temple is a six-foot statue of Daikoku, made from a single piece of Japanese cypress. There is also a large room filled with the mortuary tablets and black-and-white photographs of members of the community who were killed during World War II. It is moving and sad to think of the young men recruited from this mountain town—probably all farmers’ sons who wanted nothing more than to till what fields were available, but who responded, as did their American counterparts, to the patriotic call of their country.

After viewing the rest of the temple—there is also a beautiful gold-leaf, foot-and-a-half-tall statue of Kannon enshrined there—the priest’s octogenarian aunt, Sumiko, came out to greet me. She, too, kindly remembered my visit four years ago and invited me to stay for a cup of tea. As we talked, she told me that she had been born in Kyoto but was raised in Yamaguchi Prefecture far to the southwest. She had come to the temple, like Ms. Ueda, as a bride. Sumiko carries herself with a wonderful elegance, perhaps due to her Kyoto background, and speaks limited English but with a surprisingly good accent. We talked about my favorite poet, Santoka, and how he had walked through the Kiso in the 1930s. Like the abbot in Suhara, she saw me off at the temple gate, bowing until I was out of sight. From the steps there was a clear view of Mount Kisokoma against a bright blue sky.

With Sumiko’s instructions, I walked to a konbini and asked for the whereabouts of the Kakumei Shrine nearby. The young ladies attending the store assured me that there was no such thing in these parts, and I left, but an old man I encountered on the roadside told me to take the next road up the hill though the forest. Sure enough, I turned left at the next dirt road, continued up the hill through dark cedars and cypresses, and finally found a narrow mossy path that crossed a tiny stream and led up to the shrine. The wooden building was quite old and dilapidated, surrounded by ancient trees and slippery pathways, but clearly visited from time to time: a large straw broom was hung on the wall outside for believers to sweep up after prayers. Behind the shrine there is a statue of Fudo Myo-o and some small houses for the gods—a dark and shadowy setting, appropriate for mountain worship. The story with this out-of-the-way shrine is as follows.

Sometime between 1624 and 1644, there was an ascetic by the name of Kakumei, who frequently did religious ascetic practices at Komiya Falls. He always stopped at the Kose-ya in Nojiri, and one day he spoke to the people of the inn just before leaving for Mount Ontake.

“At this time, it is my ambition to open a mountain to religious practice at Kiso Ontake. If I am able to do so, I will not be returning here again. You have always been kind to me, and I would return the favor, even if just a little, and am giving you this paper charm for safe childbirth. If the person who receives this charm does not have easy childbirth, just tear it up and throw it in the Kiso River.”

After this, every woman who received the charm had an easy childbirth, and the people of the area were extremely happy and thankful. Thinking it over, they felt that Kakumei’s charm was not just some simple thing, and sometime during the 1850s, a number of concerned people discussed the matter, and decided to build a shrine at the Komiya Falls. There they worshipped the spirit of Kakumei, and organized the Ontake-kyo Safe Childbirth Sect. Every year on the twenty-first day of the fourth month and the twenty-third day of the tenth month festivals are held, at one time attracting over a thousand people.

I was sorry to have missed the festival by only a few days but happy to have been able to find the small shrine. Leaving a few hundred yen in the offering box in front of Fudo Myo-o, I headed back through the forest and down the hill. Once again at the konbini, I somewhat smugly showed the ladies there the photographic evidence of the shrine’s existence in my camera to responses of oohs and aahs and “Who would have known?”

Now came the long walk to the Koiji minshuku, and once again, I took the wrong road. When I stopped to ask a man washing his car for directions, he declared it to be too far to walk and kindly offered to drive me there. I consulted the matter with my blistered feet for a moment, and off we went, first across the Kiso River, then the Atera River, and I was finally dropped off at the Koiji. My driver friend bowed good-bye from inside the car, and I was greeted by Ms. Uegaki Ryoko, the o-kami-san, a cheerful and talkative woman in her fifties. Ryoko quickly settled me in my room with tea, cookies, and Japanese tangerines, and it was time for a short rest.

The Koiji is a large single-story structure—originally a farmhouse—situated just above some vegetable fields and overlooking the Kiso River. The two rooms designated for travelers would probably not accommodate more than four people at a time, and the toilets and sinks at the end of the hall seem to have been added for just such a number of guests. Dinners are served in the guests’ rooms, but breakfast takes place at a table between the kitchen and the family’s living room. This minshuku is clearly a secondary income for the family, and the traveler more or less takes part in their life—at least in the morning. It is a very comfortable setting, and Ryoko is warm and attentive, but not intrudingly so.

For travelers who wish more upscale accommodations, there is a large onsen, the Atera-so, just down the road, which includes some very large tile baths, a spacious dining hall, and is just across the way from a rotenburo, a large indoor-outdoor bath where people go to spend the day. When my wife and I stayed at the Atera-so years ago, there was a happy party taking place, celebrating the head priest’s office being passed from one generation to the next. A good bit of drinking had been going on, and finally an ambulance had had to come and take someone away. The person was fine, the manager reported, and the party went on. This time, I was satisfied to be at the quiet and peaceful Koiji, looking out at the mountains from the large glass sliding door of my room.

About a ten-minute walk from the Koiji is the confluence of the Atera and Kiso Rivers. A narrow road winds up the gorge through which the Atera River flows, with steep banks and inclines on both sides, and is lined with a forest of tall, dark cypress trees, some hundreds of years old. The flow of the current is remarkably clear, the river itself being studded with thousands of stones and rocks of all sizes. Here and there are deep, still pools, reflecting the full autumn colors of the maples along the river. Although this road is not actually a part of the Kiso Road, it is not to be passed by, even if your blisters are the size of large pinto beans by this time.

So after a short rest at the Koiji, I gingerly tied on my boots and walked to the entrance of the Ateragawa Keikoku, the Atera-gawa Gorge. It was about two in the afternoon, a bright sunny day, and it was nice not to be shouldering a backpack. The sides of the gorge narrow almost right at the beginning, however, and the wall-like cliffs block out all but a sliver of sky overhead. The forest is mysteriously dark, the atmosphere changes almost immediately, and the only sounds come from the current of the narrow Atera River as it rushes and vaults down to join the Kiso. The Japanese have traditionally found such places to evoke a sense of kami, the gods or god energy, and it is not difficult to understand why. The early inhabitants of the islands buried their dead in the mountains, and after time, the souls of the dead became resident spirits and gods. The rocks, trees, and waters of the mountains, too, were—and still are—believed to be sacred and to harbor divine spirits.

But I was not alone with the gods. After about a thirty-minute hike, there was a sign by the side of the road that warned against “bears and wasps.” To my knowledge, there had been no fatal encounters on this road, and when I left the minshuku with the mention of where I was going, Ryoko simply smiled with an “Itte irasshai” (“Go and come back”). Nevertheless, now I wondered what might be looking at me through the forest as I walked on. Years ago, when I walked this road for the first time, a man pulled up in a small car, gave me two Japanese tangerines, warned me against the bears, and sped off back down the mountain. I wasn’t sure what the tangerines were for, but I kept them at the ready until I was back at the minshuku. This time, to my good fortune, I had been thoughtful enough to tuck my slender volume of the Ryoko yojinshu, with its printed a talisman against “disasters and illnesses in the mountains and sea,” into the pocket of my jacket, and thus felt assured that all would be well.

Although I had only been walking for about an hour, the light was beginning to slip away, and I started to think about turning back. On my right, however, there was a narrow mossy pathway that led to a small shrine where one might pray to the gods of the Atera. With furtive looks on either side, I made my way up the trail farther into the forest, found the old weathered wooden shrine, made a short prayer of thanks, and beat a hasty retreat to the road.

Continuing on up, I found the ugen no taki, or “Falls Manifested by the Rain,” a thin waterfall coming over a cliff about five hundred feet up. It was almost nothing more than a feathery spray of mist, and the name indicates that it is only a true waterfall when it rains. The cliff itself is a sheer face of rock, dotted here and there by a small cypress or maple full of red, yellow, or purple leaves. Yet farther up the road were other falls and several large pools, but the light was failing quickly, and I stopped at the Tanuki Abyss—a broad, deep, and quiet pool—climbed down the boulders to cool my feet for a moment, and turned back.

Naturally enough, I had not been thinking that the hike downhill is always harder on the feet than going up, and when I finally arrived at the Kioji, I could barely walk. But as I settled into the hot bath, I felt no regrets and considered myself lucky that I had been able to take this pilgrimage again. Back in my room, Ryoko delivered a sumptuous Kiso dinner, and later, when I crawled under my futon, I drifted off feeling confident that on the next day my feet would be absolutely fine.

THE NEXT MORNING, of course, my feet were not absolutely fine, and as I hobbled into the dining room, Ryoko looked at me with some concern. Saving me the humiliation, she called up the master of my next stop, the Yakiyama no Yu, and without my having to ask, told him to meet me at the train station in Nojiri and to then drive me on up to his minshuku. I was grateful for her kindness, remembering yet again the I-Ching hexagram I had thrown while still back home in Florida,

When it is time to stop, he stops; when it is time to move, he moves.

And I silently sat down to a breakfast of grilled salmon, tiny deep-fried fish in a small celadon bowl, a tomato, broccoli, small clams boiled in sugar and soy sauce, miso soup, rice, and plenty of coffee. In the adjoining room, Ryoko, her husband, her elderly mother, and her (Ryoko’s) two-year-old granddaughter were enjoying a children’s show on the TV, the granddaughter dancing around in front of the screen. Soon, the show was over, and the little one was taken off, reluctantly on her part, to a nearby nursery school.

The Chinese characters for Atera, , mean, inversely, the temple of Ah, which is the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet. According to William Soothill’s A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms,

[] is the first letter of the Sanskrit Siddham alphabet. . . . From it are supposed to be born all the other letters, and it is the first sound uttered by the human mouth. It has therefore numerous mystical indications. Being also a negation, it symbolizes the unproduced, the impermanent, the immaterial; but it is employed in many ways indicative of the positive. Amongst other uses it indicates Amitabha [the Buddha of the Western Paradise], from the first syllable in that name. It is much in use for esoteric purposes.

This character is important in the Shingon sect, an esoteric sect of Buddhism brought from China to Japan by Kukai in 806, almost four hundred years before the advent of Zen. Kukai taught that the esoteric meanings of Shingon could be conveyed not in wordy explanations, but rather through art; and one of his practices was to meditate on the character , either while gazing at an artistic representation on a scroll in front of the practitioner or by visualization.

At the breakfast table, when I asked if there was such a Shingon temple in the area, the grandmother mentioned that her grandfather once said that there had been a temple not far from here, but nothing remained of it even when he was a boy. Ryoko’s husband then interjected that that the temple had in fact been called the Andera, and that it was somehow connected with the Ainu, the people who predated the Japanese on the islands and whose ancient sites are scattered all along the Kiso. But the Ainu were, and still are, bear worshippers and would have never been exposed to Shingon at their early dates. Nevertheless, there is a strong connection with Shingon and the avatar Fudo Myo-o, who is sometimes conflated with a bear image. And what about that sign urging me to beware of bears? It seemed clear that the mystery of this place was not to be understood by reason alone. Kukai, bears, the Ainu, and the character—all pieces of a puzzle that could only be walked through, letting reason follow its own path.

After breakfast, I limped back to my room and studied the map. There seem to be three ways one could take to the next post town, Midono. The first is the Kiso Road that follows the river—and consequently the national highway and the Chuo-sen. This is a longish but direct route and may be the one—the road has changed over the years—that Kaibara Ekiken wrote of in his journal, Kisoji.

Generally speaking, the Shinano Road [here, the Kiso Road] runs entirely through the mountains. Particularly in the mountains of the Kiso there are distant mountains and deep valleys, and many trails that go along the edge of the slopes. The road between Nojiri and Midono is especially dangerous. In this area, the mountain is to your left, and along its side a scant stone road. On your right there are high cliffs, in many places looking like standing folding screens. Down below, the deep waters of the Kiso River, along which are many suspension bridges. . . . These are not bridges suspended across the river, but rather [go along the side of the cliffs] where the road has given out. You see a lot of these in Chinese paintings, but in other countries they are quite rare. Many wind around the slopes and promontories of the mountains, enter valleys, and again snake their way around the mountains. They are extraordinarily dangerous.

I recalled taking this road four years earlier; there had been some very steep climbing, and the only other hiker I saw had been holding his chest as though he were about to have a heart attack. Still, it had followed the Kiso River for the most part, and there had seemed to be more than the usual number of huge boulders and rocks midstream. It had been an exhausting but exhilarating walk. At the confluence of the Yogawa and Kiso Rivers, not far from Midono, there still stands a six-foot stone statue of Jizo standing on a lotus platform, placed there in 1845. The year before, on the seventeenth day of 1844, the moorland below the mountains to the east was flooded from the waters of the Yogawa, running through land that had been deforested by a lumber project of the Owari fief. Over a hundred day laborers lost their lives that day in just moments, and in the nearby villages, the event is still explained in this way.

The Yogawa River flows down from the mountains not too far from the village of Nagiso. Many years ago, an aristocrat’s house was to be built upstream in those mountains, and a large number of woodcutters was gathered under an organizing official to cut down the many trees needed for the project. Among these woodcutters was an honest man by the name of Yohei.

One night during a violent rain, Yohei was awakened by the sound of someone knocking at the door of his hut. When he cautiously opened the door, he found a woman dressed in white standing sadly before him. The woman then told him that if they cut down any more trees, some terrible event would occur.

The following morning, Yohei told his colleagues about this, and they all were quite frightened and refused to continue their work. The official, however, would not hear of this and commanded them to carry on. In the end, Yohei was so frightened that he made up an excuse about having a stomach ache and left the jobsite.

At some point that night, the woman again appeared and said, “Tomorrow it will begin to rain. Please flee to the top of the mountain.” She then disappeared into the darkness.

The next day, just as the woman had said, it began to rain in sheets, the earth and sand began to loosen and crumble, and the houses in the village were swept entirely away. Even parts of the Nakasendo gave way and collapsed. As this was happening, Yohei saw a white snake flowing along with the earth and sand, and understood that this snake had only taken on the form of a woman in order to warn him of the coming disaster.

After this event, Yohei quit his job as a woodcutter and took up leading packhorses loaded with foodstuffs from the province of Owari.

A statue of Jizo had been a memorial to these workers and is still prayed to in their memory; the forests have been replanted, however, and in the peaceful and quiet mountains, nothing else is left to remind us of this sad calamity.

The second path is marked the Yogawa Road on the map and leads deep inland from the river. This is a winding forested road that eventually leads back to the Kiso Road near Midono. A little more than halfway along—Ryoko informed me that the entire route takes about four hours—the traveler reaches the site of the famous Koten-an. According to tradition, this was a small hut where a Buddhist priest, a descendant of the Kiso clan, practiced his religion, and it has been well-known since ancient times for its connection with the moon. In the middle of the Edo period, Matsudaira Kunzan, the magistrate of documents for the Owari fief, made this entry in his Poems in Chinese and Japanese of the Eight Views of the Kiso Road.

The mist flows over the river, and the moon at midnight Shines on the autumn scenery with the radiance of jewels. As though answering this, my hempen robe flinches with cold; In the mountain villages here and there, you hear the voice of the fulling block.

Sometime between 1744 and 1748, the poet Yokoi Yuya wrote in his Kisoji kiko,

Deep autumn:

passing through the heavy growth

of the many high peaks.

Cleansed by the Yogawa

the perfectly clear moon.

And an unknown poet wrote,

Fleeing to this place,

should I stay here for a while

at dawn

the Yogawa moon

will be my view.

The Yogawa Road has been designated a “historical road” and was traveled as early as 708. On this trip, it would have to be left to my imagination or to another day.

The third route can be taken directly from the Koiji minshuku. It is a tough, steep climb up through the Kakizore Gorge, peaking more or less at the Yakiyama no Yu, an onsen run by a Mr. and Mrs. Ichikawa (no relation to my friend). From the onsen, the road is all downhill, meeting the old Nakasendo, the national highway, and the Chuo-sen about halfway to Midono. This is the route I would take today, with the help of Ryoko and Mr. Ichikawa, and with no help from my feet.

About nine o’clock, Ryoko drove me across the river and to the railroad station, where I was soon picked up by Mr. Ichikawa, who smiled and said, “O-hisashiburi, desu ne.” (“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it.”) Twelve years—much too long, I thought.

For now, Ichikawa-san carefully drove his small, white truck up the narrow road that had once been a narrow-gauge railroad, used for taking lumber out of the area. We twisted back and forth up and up the steep pass, and I was beginning to feel grateful for the blistered feet that had saved me from this walk. Pulling over at the top of the pass, my driver showed me a shrine to Kannon, a small rest house for hikers, and an old stone monument engraved with the dosojin, the old man and woman gods that look out for travelers along the way. Finally, we climbed to a lookout from where we could see Mount Kisokoma (a mountain I had climbed with my friend Ichikawa back in 1968) and the ridgeline of the Southern Alps. It was a cloudless clear day, and we lingered for a while at the lookout, reluctant to leave.

The Yakiyama no Yu is built on a narrow plateau not far down from the pass and close enough to the Koiji River that guests can hear the voice of its currents at all times, night and day. The building is a two-story structure, part of it quite old, but my room, through the large sliding window of which I could see the autumn mountains and hear the sound of the river, was spacious and clean. A low table had been placed in the center of the room, set with tea and soba crackers. This would be a good place to rehabilitate, I thought. It would also be the first time my jacket, which I now hung on a peg on the wall, had not been soaked through with sweat.

The onsen itself had been given a traditional look—unglazed high-fired pots with arrangements of mountain flowers, a table in the middle of the sitting room with smooth tree stumps for chairs around a rectangular open brazier filled with charcoal and ashes. Suspended from the low ceiling over the brazier was a cast-iron soot-blackened tea kettle, from which came a steady stream of steam. Just beyond the brazier was the entrance to the baths—one for men, one for women—open 24/7, which looked out to the mountains and river through large sliding glass windows. Everything was made of wood—wooden stools, wooden buckets, wooden floor and walls, and the wooden sunken baths themselves. Supplied for the bather were dispensers of body soap, shampoo, and conditioner. Santoka would have loved this place, but Ichikawa-san assured me that, to his knowledge, the poet had never come this far off the Kiso Road.

It was still a little early, so after the tea and soba crackers, I decided to take a short tour around the area. Walking down the path from the entrance, I found a soba shop, a two-hundred-year-old folk-style house that had been moved up to this place from the Yokawa area for preservation. In front of the old shop was a deep pond, in which orange and white spotted carp appeared momentarily at the surface and then disappeared. Farther along the path, through the woods, there were two little wooden outhouses for urgent use: “urgent” because these were the traditional porcelain-lined hole on the floor over which a person squats. They were neat and clean and even had a supply of toilet paper but were likely not so inviting to foreigners or to the modern urban Japanese.

Passing these by, I crossed a very shaky plank kakehashi over the river. This one was suspended by thin wire cables, and I was reminded of all the poets who had been made queasy at the very sight of such “bridges.” The air was full of yellow butterflies.

Walking back to the Yakiyama no Yu, I found that Mrs. Ichikawa, a pleasant-looking woman in her mid-fifties, was cooking up my lunch in the kitchen. Her left arm had been stricken with paralysis, and she had been “sick,” as she said, when Gary, Robbie, and I had been here before. She had now, however, fought her way back to doing much of the work at the onsen. I sat back at the brazier and was soon served a large, wooden lacquer bowl of ramen, filled with slices of pork, seaweed, kamaboko (a kind of congealed boiled fish paste—very tasty), and pickled bracken. It was hot and good and came with a large wooden spoon to finish off the broth.

After lunch, during which I was joined by two elderly hikers “just passing through,” I decided on a quick nap. Kaibara Ekiken, who passed through here in the late 1600s, advised us never to sleep after a meal—it stagnates our ch’i—but the combination of the hot soba, cool air, and the relaxed ambiance of the Yakiyama no Yu made it hard to resist, and, gazing at the wall of autumn leaves on the mountains and listening to the sound of the river, I slipped away . . .

The valley stream is exactly the wide, long tongue [of the Buddha]

The mountain scenery is his body of purity.

I woke to the sound of Mrs. Ichikawa knocking at my door. She apologized for bothering me but suggested that I go ahead and take a bath before dinner, although I was welcome to bathe as many times as I liked. I reminded myself that this was a recuperation day, thanked Mrs. Ichikawa, grabbed the small thin towel provided by the onsen, and went down to the baths on the first floor. After disrobing, I entered the bathroom to find that another guest was already sitting in the sunken wooden tub, his wife being over on the women’s side. I asked if I might join him, and he readily assented. I first washed and rinsed off and then stepped into the tub—no more than two people could fit comfortably in this one. We talked, enjoyed our soak, and looked out at the mountain. He and his wife were from a town near Nagoya and had driven out for the day to see the autumn foliage. He noted that the two other places famous for the autumn leaves were closed to cars due to landslides caused by the typhoons—a disappointment as his vacations from work were rare. We left together, wishing each other a safe trip.

Among the different types of Japanese baths, this kind is my own personal favorite. The one at the Komao had been big—enough for six people at least—but was made of tile and in an enclosed room. It was comfortable to be sure, but these rustic baths of wood and outdoor scenery cannot be compared with.

Back up in my room, I read some more from Confucius, listened to the sound of the river, and came across this passage.

The Master was standing by the river and said, “It goes on like this, never stopping day or night.”

On this evening it was quiet at the Yakiyama no Yu, and I was the only guest staying over. Ichikawa-san informed me that the next day, however, they would have about twenty guests—a full house—and this had been the situation when Robbie, Gary, and I stopped here years ago. We slept in one of the outbuildings at that time but came in to the main hall for dinner with everyone else. The place had been packed, and we all sat at low tables and were served by a number of helpers. After about an hour of great eating, the three of us were approached by a tall, slender man with a full shock of gray hair who had been seated at the table next to ours. He had been doing some pretty good damage on the sake but politely introduced himself as Mr. Yamamoto Ichiro. He was there, he explained, with his friend, a Mr. Ito, and their wives. All of them were in their eighties and were celebrating something I never quite understood. Both men had fought in World War II with the Japanese Navy in Singapore and Burma, and when Japan surrendered, they had handed over their weapons and uniforms and were sent home. Mr. Yamamoto had been a mountain climber and snow skier in his youth and still took to the mountains whenever he could. As he had had little intercourse with Americans ever since the war, he wanted to further celebrate the occasion by introducing the three of us to kotsuzake, which, he said, was sake in a long dish containing iwana, a river fish—a method said to kill the bad taste of low-grade alcohol. A couple of cups of kotsuzake was quite enough, thank you, so we moved on to the better stuff for the rest of the meal. As time (and sake) went on, Mr. Yamamoto became more and more enthusiastic about his new friends and wanted to take a commemorative photo. An amateur photographer, he had all of his equipment there and set his camera up on a tripod directly in front of us. As he tried to position his tripod lower and lower, he widened his stance and lowered his hips for balance. Gradually, it became apparent that he was wearing nothing underneath his yukata, the thin cotton bathrobe the Japanese often wear after a bath. As he sank lower and lower, the four middle-aged high school teachers (all of them women) sitting next to us and in full view of Mr. Yamamoto’s imminent full exposure were turning red and laughing. The men’s wives were yelling at him to stand up straight, but he wasn’t getting it and waved them off, while Mr. Ito, of course, was encouraging his friend to get just a little lower. In the end, Yamamoto-san got his photograph, and everyone else got an eyeful, but after that there was a lot more sake and laughing. Bowing deeply, the two men, now flushed quite red in the face, were led off by their wives to bed, no doubt to face a real talking to in the morning.

When I came down to the dining room this evening, Mrs. Ichikawa was waiting for me with sake and served me iwana, vegetable tempura, shoyu no moto, and huge clusters of fresh mushrooms—both shiitake and maetake—which she herself grilled on a small brazier on the table. She talked a lot—about her paralysis and how she had overcome her depression and immobility through will power and knowing that only she could do it. Her calligraphy, which she practiced in order to regain coordination, was hung here and there in the inn. Her style was kuzuji, or “broken characters,” perhaps not on purpose, but which had a lot of charm and was quite whimsical and captivating. When Gary, Robbie, and I were here so many years ago, she had been in bed and couldn’t or wouldn’t come out, and Mr. Ichikawa had had to run the whole show. It must have been doubly hard on him, and I remember his being rather taciturn at the time—quite unlike the way he was now.

Mrs. Ichikawa and I continued to talk and sip sake long after I could eat no more, but I finally excused myself to go upstairs to my room. She invited me to have another bath, but I would have probably sunk to the bottom. In my room, I read folktales of the Kiso for a while until I could keep my eyes open no longer. Spreading out the futon, I fell asleep to the now familiar sound of the Koiji River.

Water flowing

into the night:

the autumn inn.

—Santoka

AT FOUR THIRTY, I was awakened in the dark by two competing roosters, one crowing immediately after the other, and was entertaining some very un-Buddhist thoughts about them as I tried to get back to sleep. At six thirty, they gave up, and so did I. Although ready for coffee, I was aware that they slept late here because of Mrs. Ichikawa’s condition and so settled in to enjoy the early-morning light from the warmth of my futon. The weather was cold and clear. It was extremely quiet here in the mountains—other than the roosters and the river—and I was beginning to miss the human company that a lonely night at the Yakiyama no Yu had lacked. I would soon have enough of that in the next two towns of Tsumago and Magome.

It was cold even inside the onsen, but after a while I trotted downstairs, announced my presence with an ohayoo—good morning!—and waited patiently by the now-cold brazier. Mrs. Ichikawa presently appeared with a small cup of coffee and a big smile. Her paralysis seemed to be a little worse in the morning, but she worked gamely away and always in good cheer. Sometime during the night, she had hung a piece of her calligraphy, , “dream,” in the dining room, and in the hallway leading to my room, one brushed with , “A single rain benefits a thousand mountains,” both with messages for herself and others, I presume. Then, breakfast was served: two kinds of daikon, miso soup, rice with a raw egg and seaweed strips, grilled mushrooms, sliced turnip dipped in olive oil and black pepper, and chopped lettuce—not your ordinary fare, but one to start the day off well.

Well fed if not well slept, I returned to my room, adjusted my still-full pack, and headed downstairs to check out. As I was about to go out through the front entrance, I made the mistake of admiring a small piece of unglazed pottery meant to hold a single flower. Before I knew it, it was wrapped up along with a small similarly unglazed cup and given to me as a souvenir. Protests did no good, and I found myself trying to fit the package containing the two fragile items in between my socks and underwear, adding a short prayer that the contents would remain safe for the rest of the trip. I should have known better by this time—express admiration for something in this country and it will soon be yours. Lack of attachment is a hard lesson to learn but one taught by Buddhism in Japan for over a thousand years.

Outside, I waited for Mr. Ichikawa to take me down the mountain to the next post town, but there he was bowing deeply at the entranceway. Then, Mrs. Ichikawa drove up in a small white car, and I realized that she would be doing the driving. I put my backpack in the backseat and hopped in the front, trying not to show any concern, and off we went. We chatted all the way down the mountain, and she explained how living in the countryside with limited mobility had been terrible. She had forced herself to relearn how to drive, she explained, but with her right hand and foot only. Down we went, around sharp curves and narrow one-way roads, and she handled the standard shift like a race-car driver. Arriving in front of the railroad station at Nagiso, she gave me a big hug—not the usual good-bye in Japan. I hugged her back and gave her a kiss on the cheek, and there were tears in her eyes.

I bowed low until she drove out of the parking lot and disappeared back onto the highway.

COURSE TIME

Nojiri-shuku to Midono-shuku: 10 kilometers (6 miles). 3 hours, 20 minutes.